Seattle author Molly Ringle has won an annual writing contest with this opening sentence: “For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

San Jose State University English department announced Ringle as the grand prize winner of the

for bad writing. Since 1982, entrants have been asked to compose the opening sentence to the worst novel possible. The literary competition is named after English novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton who penned the phrase: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

, a science-fiction author in Toronto and reserve infantry officer in the Canadian Forces, won in the romance category with this opener: “Trent, I love you,” Fiona murmered, and her nostrils flared at the faint trace of her lover’s masculine scent, sending her heart racing and her mind dreaming of the life they would live together, alternating sumptuous world cruises with long, romantic interludes in the mansion on his private island, alone together except for the maids, the cook, the butler, and Dirk and Rafael, the hard-bodied pool boys.

Fellow Canadian Jonathan Blay from Bedford, N.S. was the runner-up in the category: “She purred sensually, oozing allure that was resisted only by his realization as an entomologist that the protein dust on the couch from the filing of her crimson nails was now being devoured by dust mites in a clicking, ferocious, ecstatic frenzy.”

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